High Standards vs Abuse

Can you make a company without breaking a few employees?

I think a lot about how to avoid working with assholes. And how to avoid becoming one myself.

Like most people, I think of myself as a nice person who sometimes says or does the wrong thing — usually when I’m tired, hungry, or stressed. And, also like most people, when someone says or does the wrong thing to me I tend to think of them as an asshole.

This is what social psychologist Lee Ross was describing when he coined the term “fundamental attribution error” back in 1967; that we humans tend to attribute our own behavior to circumstance and the behavior of others to character.

One reason this is on my mind is that I’m turning 59 in a few weeks and recently lost a close friend to cancer at the age of 53. I’m painfully aware that life, and business is a part of life, is way too short to spend it with people who abuse, frustrate, or just plain don’t care about me.

On the other hand, I’m aware that I want to accomplish a lot in life, and that this requires sacrifice, or at least a bit of flexibility. I’m also aware that people may act like assholes often because of circumstances and we have some control over those. Some control, but not total of course.

My work for many years has focused on building organizations that are effective and human-centered. My legacy, I hope, will be a few good companies and a body of work with some sound information about how to create them.

I want to leave the world a bit better, even infinitesimally, than I found it.

So I spend a lot of time thinking about assholes (aka malicious people who don’t care about others) and how we can avoid working with them and especially keep them from being in positions of power.

There’s a book out now by Rob Copeland called “The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend.” Its great as is a recent interview with the author (I’ll link to both below).

Through interviews and research, Copeland makes a pretty strong case that Dalio’s management style is, well, abusive and self-interested — even as Dalio positions himself as an enlightened leader with the keys to a meaningful life through his “Principles.”

In the interview, Copeland describes a conversation he had with Walter Isaacson, who wrote a book about Elon Musk. According to Copeland, Isaacson sees Musk’s famously difficult personality as an essential feature of his business success.

His idea seems to be that you can’t build a rocket ship without breaking a few employees.

I sort of see his point; tension and stress can be motivating and generative. But how much is too much? And is this particular juice worth that kind of squeeze? High-standards can just be high-standards of course — and they can also be a cover and excuse for egomania.

Back in 2012 I sat in a conference room in Waterloo, Ontario waiting on a senior executive from RIM (now BlackBerry Limited) to helicopter in from Toronto. I was in the room with the 15 or so people leading the development of BlackBerry 10 — the OS that would run an iPhone-like device and hopefully save the company.

I, and my team, were supposed to help get the project back on track. But that never happened.

We waited most of the morning, eating muffins and drinking bad coffee, then someone came in and told us to tune into a tech-news show. On the show the exec we were waiting on had just made a big announcement. He’d promised a bunch of new features and a very tight delivery timeline for BlackBerry 10.

The folks in the room were stunned. He’d bypassed and ignored them, and made a big, public, promise they knew they couldn’t deliver on. A kind of asshole move if you ask me. A junior engineer sitting next to me said “wow, if I had any stock in this company I’d be selling it now.” This would have been the right move since the stock continued to plummet and has never recovered.

I’m not claiming this event caused the BlackBerry to fail — the iPhone writing was on the wall. I also know that Steve Jobs famously promised more than engineers thought they could deliver and many claim his “reality distortion field” was a key to Apple’s success. Well Isaacson says so at least.

I take away both personal and professional lessons from this reflection.

Some assholes have built innovative companies. But behavior is contagious. I have seen many mediocre leaders emulate this style and create unproductive and toxic workplaces. It’s a classic signal vs noise confusion in my opinion — Jobs was successful despite his asshole tendencies not because of them.

I’ve also seen how toxic workplaces create circumstances that make otherwise nice people behave like assholes.

Even if assholes succeed in creating profitable companies and disruptive technologies, they tend to make the world around them small and bitter. And life, at least for me, is too short to spend too much time around them if I can avoid it.

I also think there is a better way to found, run, and lead companies. I work every day to do better myself and help others create profitable, productive, and sustainable companies that are free of abuse and that really care for employees. It is possible in my experience and I’ve seen many examples of great companies built and run by non-assholes.

PS: I'd love to hear your examples of, and experience with, great companies that treat people well. Please share in the comments and tag in the good ones.

--

Book: The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend, by Rob Copeland

Interview: The Fund: Rob Copeland on Ray Dalio

PS if you haven't seen it yet the movie Blackberry on Hulu is a fun watch but takes place in the years before my visit to RIM.